IIITHE GIRL FROM BEYOND JORDAN
Inthe Book of Judges are recounted the adventures which befell certain Bethlehemites in those lawless days when “there was no king in Israel and every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” But the people mentioned in this history were no longer dwelling in the city of their birth; and we are glad of an excuse to pass by the tale of reckless crime and merciless vengeance. Yet here, too, if the story were not too cruel to repeat, we should find a woman dying for one whom she loved.
Even in that rough frontier period, however, there were interludes of peace and kindliness; and like the cooling breeze which blows from snow-capped Lebanon upon the burning brow of the Syrian reaper, is the sense of grateful refreshment when we turn from the heartrending monotony of scenes of cruelty and lust and treachery to the sweet, clean air of the whitening harvest fields of Boaz of Bethlehem.
When the two strange women entered the square there was great excitement among the chattering busy-bodies who were waiting their turn to fill their earthen jars at the public well; for one of the travelers was seen to be no other than old Naomi, who long years before had gone away across Jordan with her husband Elimelech to better theirfortunes among the famous farm-lands of Moab. Now the wanderer has returned to the old home, poor and widowed and childless—no doubt to the secret gratification of the more cautious stay-at-homes, who had never dared tempt fortune by such an emigration to distant Moab, and who were still no richer and no poorer than their fathers’ fathers had been.
The other woman was younger, a foreigner, a widow, so the gossip ran, who had married Naomi’s dead son. The women at the well smiled at her quaint accent, for the dialect of Moab is quite different from that of the Bethlehem district. But many a stalwart young farmer dreamed that night of the lonely, appealing eyes of the stranger from beyond Jordan.
Even middle-aged Boaz is stirred whenthe next morning he finds the slender Moabitess among the women who are gleaning in his barley field; for romance is not always dead in the soul of a mature and wealthy landowner. Boaz, for all his grizzling hair, is a hero who makes us feel very warm and comfortable about the heart. He is so generous, so thoughtful, so humble in his final happiness. He has already been touched by the story of the faithfulness of the young widow who said to her mother-in-law,
“Entreat me not to leave thee, and to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”
“Entreat me not to leave thee, and to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”
So the rich man drops a hint to his servants to let fall carelessly little heaps of grain where the new gleaner can easilygather them. He remembers the rough, dissolute character of the itinerant harvesters, and warns them to treat the young woman with respect and courtesy. At noontime he invites her to share the simple luncheon provided for the farm-hands. A few weeks later the lonely rich man discovers her affection for him, and our hearts beat in sympathy with his as, with characteristic modesty, he exclaims,
“Blessed be thou of Jehovah, my daughter: thou hast shown more kindness in the latter end than at the beginning, inasmuch as thou followedest not young men, whether poor or rich.”
“Blessed be thou of Jehovah, my daughter: thou hast shown more kindness in the latter end than at the beginning, inasmuch as thou followedest not young men, whether poor or rich.”
But as well might one attempt to retouch the soft colorings of the Judean sunrise as to re-tell the beautiful idyll of Ruth. Old Josephus quite misses the delicate beauty of the story; for he concludes his smug paraphraseby saying, “I was therefore obliged to recount this history of Ruth, because I had a mind to demonstrate the power of God, who, without difficulty, can raise those that are of ordinary parents to dignity and splendor.”
They lived together happily ever afterward. Even sad Naomi found a new interest in life when she took into her lonely old arms the form of little Obed. For this bit of Bethlehem history, like the first, and like the greatest later on, ends with the coming of a baby boy. And doubtless, if the whole of the tale were told us, we should some day see grandmother Ruth crooning over Obed’s son Jesse, who was to be the father of a king.